Universe as an Enterprise Social Network or as a classical Intranet

Using Universe as an Enterprise Social Network or setting it up as a classical intranet.

Written by Antero Hanhirova Updated over a week ago

Universe is built to handle 2 approaches to the intranet: modern and classical. The latter is familiar to most and means that Universe Pages is used as the landing page and news distribution center for users. The modern way leverages Universe's great power as an Enterprise Social Network to bring users the news they are interested in and uses Pages as a source of static information and news that require more space.

Choosing the approach is crucial when implementing Universe. On the one hand you have what users are used to and on the other hand there is something new. Whichever you choose to match your organization's needs the best – we strongly recommend only choosing one. This means that if you choose to use Pages as the central hub, don't use Channels to distribute the bulk of news to your users. This will only make it confusing for the users.

Here is a short breakdown of the different benefits and possible pitfalls that the different approaches have.

Modern

The modern approach is a great way to give users the power to decide. They can choose what news is most important to them, which in turn empowers them to communicate more.

Managing news is extremely important and making sure users have no more than a maximum of 3 news channels 'pushed' to them is critical.

The modern approach:

Focuses on the users' own content

Offers the possibility to choose what is important and what is not

Enhances communication and collaboration

Can produce an information overflow, if news are not managed

Classical

The classical approach promotes a way of working that is comfortable to most users. Administrators and internal communications teams can decide what users will read and how prominently these news and feeds are presented to the users. Users will have access to Channels, but not as a news source.

Managing Pages as a news source is especially important. Users shouldn't have to guess where the company news is – it needs to be on the Universe landing page.

The classical approach:

Focuses on company content

Offers administrators the possibility choose what is important and what to promote